Friday, August 14, 2009

I pulled into the parking lot to see about four other vehicles, and walked in the door to see a woman behind the slidy glass window (I swear), as well as an elderly couple checking out. And the guy from yesterday, wearing a white coat.

So, okay, he's probably not the cleaning service. Good to know.

Soon, I also saw another woman, looking like a nurse or technician or something, and a few other elderly couples.

(I seemed to be the only one there without a date. And under 70 years old.)

The same fellow took me back to a different exam room, asked a few questions and looked in my eyes some more.

He agreed that the right eye looked better than yesterday, but now the left eye was red.

At this point, they were pretty much equally red, which is worse than having one red eye.

With one, people say, "Oh my God! What happened to your eye?" but with two red eyes, they just look at you funny, and think you've either been crying alot, or getting no sleep, or smoking dope.

(Actually, I suppose that two out of three of those guesses would be correct.)

I told him that I'd already started putting the drops in both eyes, and he approved of that, because the infection had obviously spread to it.

(Remember yesterday, how my eye was irritated by something that had gotten in it? Right.)

Then, he said, "Okay, Dr. F. will be in soon," and went away.

A few minutes later, Dr. F (I presume) came in. He's about 100 years old, and walks very stooped over, but I suppose he sounded like he knew what he was talking about.

As he was checking me, the guy from yesterday came back in and sort of hovered near the door, watching and listening. At one point, Dr. F said something about, "As Dr. A told you yesterday. . . ." so I guess that guy is a doctor, but not one of the ones whose name is on the practice.

I've also decided that they were closed yesterday, but that he came in and saw me anyway, because it was an "emergency." It would have been nice if he'd told me that.

Dr. F asked me a few questions, and looked in my eyes and then told me that, "This is a classical allergic reaction. Are you usually bothered by seasonal allergies?"

No, not really, and I've never had anything like this happen to my eyes, and this is the 11th summer that I've lived in the same town, so I can't imagine I'm encountering any new pollen. But, nevermind all that, it's an allergic reaction.

He said that I should stop using the antibiotic drops, and start using some new ones that he would prescribe, with some antibiotic but also some steriod.

I checked to be sure that there was no antihistamine in them, because I don't want my eyeballs to go crazy, and that since it's only in my eyeballs, the steriod would be safe for breastfeeding.

He said that only a tiny, tiny, tiny amount would be absorbed systemically, and "I'm, well, I'm not 100% certainly, but I'm almost certain it would be fine, but I'm not certain, but. . . ."

So, I asked him a question that I'd run across recently in a blog post about how to handle it when your doctor says you can't breastfeed with certain medications: "If I were bring my baby in with these symptoms, would you be comfortable prescribing the same medication to her? Would you give these drops to a nine-month-old?"

He said, "Nine months old? Oh, certainly!"

So, I asked him to call in the prescription to save me some time, I made an appointment to follow up next week, and got home just in time to for my noon tutoring session.

I picked up the drops this afternoon, and have used them several times (he said to put them in about every two hours today, and then four times a day for the next five days) and I think my eyes are looking a bit better already.

So, let's review.

It seems that something flew into my right eye, and then I got it out, but it irritated it and caused an infection which migrated to the other eye, triggering an allergic reaction.

Um . . . okay.

As I said, though, they do seem to be getting better, and Peeper is not showing any symptoms, so I guess he's right about it not being contagious.

In other news, now my throat is scratchy again and I'm wondering if I might be a little bit fevery.